Before Question Time, I was endeavouring to demonstrate to the House that there is not a single member of the present Government who can point to a single achievement for which he was responsible since the last general election. Just as I was reporting progress, I was dealing with the fact that the Government had appointed a new Minister in the Minister for Labour and had established a new Department to help to deal with labour unrest that has had a very serious adverse effect on our economy. I have here a publication by the Department of Finance entitled Work for All—1980, published in 1967, on page 16 of which there is a heading Strikes and Aftermath. Under it, we read:
A worrying feature of industrial relations in the last few years has been the long duration of a number of major strikes. All strikes have bad effects on output, exports, employment and earnings in other industries. The effects on industrial exports can be particularly serious. If Irish suppliers get the reputation for being unreliable, overseas customers may guard against the risk of strikes by finding alternative suppliers elsewhere. Many export sales may be lost for good. These effects could be especially serious for us because three-fifths of our exported consumer goods have been sold abroad under the distributors' brand names—not those of the exporters. This means that the exporters have no guaranteed market outlet to help them recover from an interruption in supplies.
Long-drawn-out disputes are the results of bad relations between employers and workers.
Here it is admitted by the Department of Finance themselves. Let me repeat it, for the information of the Government:
Long-drawn-out disputes are the result of bad relations between employers and workers. In the industries in which they happen, and in the businesses affected by them, the stoppages may lead to reluctance to plan new investment, and may have effects, long after they have been settled, on the rate of growth in the industry in the years ahead.
The Department of Finance have the nerve, first and foremost, to describe their booklet as Work for All.
I remember one Sunday night reading this at home in very peaceful surroundings. I could not help taking special notice when I read what the Department of Finance themselves say: "Long-drawn-out disputes are the result of bad relations between employers and workers." Here we have a Government who, realising that, set up a new Department and appointed a new Minister. Since the establishment of this new Department and the appointment of this new Minister, I cannot see any closer bond of relationship between employers and workers.
Bord na Móna, for example, lost considerably. They are on the wrong side financially, and the Minister for Transport and Power tells us this is mainly due to strikes— which could have been settled around the table in 15 minutes if a bit of commonsense and intelligence were displayed. Seemingly the big wigs of Bord na Móna did not want to give serious thought to the genuine claims of the workers employed by the Board.
I want to accuse the Government of having great responsibility for the bad industrial relations that exist. One would have thought that one of the first activities of the Government would be to make a serious effort to have most of these disputes settled by negotiation between the trade unions and the employers. I have yet to see a really unreasonable demand made by a trade union. A trade union has a responsibility to its members, but it also has a responsibility to the community, and they will not be sufficiently unintelligent to put forward an unreasonable case. In any case in which trade unions have made a demand there was very clear evidence that the concerns to whom they were making the demand had very substantial profits and dividends to distribute amongst their shareholders. If through employees' hard work, involving long hours and loss of energy, big profits are accumulated, those employees are entitled to a fair share of that wealth.
I want to accuse the Department of Labour and the Government of insincerity and inactivity in regard to labour relations. We have a bad record so far as strikes are concerned. We lose too much time, too much production, and too much which we could export, and this is all due to bad management, lack of leadership and a high degree of neglect. Things would be worse only for a very intelligent man in this country, the Chief Conciliation Officer of the Labour Court, a man who has done much to settle many of these trade disputes.
Too much time has been lost on strikes, and if any reasonable demands are presented by trade unions, there is a bounden duty on an employer, particularly if the State is the employer, to deal reasonably with those demands. The State sets a very bad headline. How very often does the State make appeals to employers to do this, that and the other, but the State is the worst employer in this country? There are many progressive employers in this country and if the various State and semi-State bodies, where there is a high degree of discontent amongst the staff, would take a headline from some of these private employers as to how to approach these problems, it would be to the benefit and to the advantage of the country. I would ask the Taoiseach and the Minister for Labour to study further this booklet Work for All. Whatever officer in the Department of Finance gave it that title has a sense of humour. I would call this booklet issued by the Department a gimmick.